Business: Is Social Media Worth The Trouble?

Of Course It Is. Here’s Why.

The old days of media relations — which is to say 10 years ago — provided an awful way for businesses to tell their stories.

How awful? The following steps generally needed to occur for an organization to effectively communicate with the general public through a newspaper story, for example:

1. Write press release.
2. Send press release to the media via the wire, email, mail, carrier pigeon, etc.
3. Call reporter. Hope she answers. If she doesn’t, hope they call back.
4. Once you hook up with reporter, convince her to write a story to share the news you have to share (and hope her editors approve the story).
5. Hope the reporter gets the story right and doesn’t let other voices drown out your message.
6. Once the story is written (and edited), hope the story isn’t buried back by the classifieds.
7. Once published (on huge reams of paper), the newspapers were taken by trucks and dropped off in news boxes around town. Other papers were delivered to paper carriers who would drive or bike through their neighborhoods and throw the papers into people’s driveways.
8. Next, you had to hope your target audience — the readers — would go outside and pick up the newspaper (which hopefully hadn’t landed in a puddle).
9. Now, this is the pivotal step: The reader must, you know, actually read the newspaper — and get to the page where the editors have placed your very important story.
10. Once the reader makes it to your page, there is still a very important step: They needed to actually read the story — and take away whatever message you were hoping to share when you wrote that press release way back on Step 1.
11. Success!

So, when business owners, organizations and politicians ask: “Social media is a headache. Is it really worth the trouble?” … the answer is almost always an unequivocal “Yes.” (That is, assuming they value communicating with the outside world.)

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instgram, Tumblr and whatnot allow communicators to cut out steps 2 through 9. Businesses, politicians and organizations can now engage directly with a self-selected group of customers, stakeholders and key influencers by creating content and delivering them directly through the channels where they live, work and play.

Here’s another way to look at it:

New, direct ways of communicating with customers, stakeholders

By definition, the “Traditional Media Relations” sliver is rather small. Communication interests between reporters and communications departments rarely overlap. When they do, that’s great. That’s where the tried and true press releases, news conferences and interviews come in.

In the areas where they don’t overlap, however, that’s where communicators provide the most value. “Reactive Communications,” for example, includes crisis communications and the reactive side of reputation management — such as litigation, recalls and other unfortunate events that too often pop up.

“Social Media Opportunity,” on the other hand, allows any organization or individual to be a publisher, content provider and media organization. They now get to talk about exactly what they want to talk about, to the people they want to talk to, in the ways they want to talk.

All directly — without a filter — to the very people they are trying to reach.

So … should you be involved in social media?